Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

16

He was the inventor of nursery schools and introduced them here first. From the age of two, children came to school, where they were entertained so well that they could hardly be brought home. While his competitors made people work 13 to 14 hours a day, in New Lanark they worked only 10 1/2 hours. When a cotton crisis forced a four-month stoppage, the idle workers continued to be paid their full wages. And yet the establishment had more than doubled in value and, until the end, yielded ample profit to the owners.

With all this, Owen was not satisfied. The existence he had created for his workers was, in his eyes, still far from human; "the people were my slaves." The relatively favorable circumstances in which he had placed them were still far from allowing an all-round, rational development of character and intellect, let alone a free activity of life.

"And yet the working part of these 2,500 people produced as much real wealth for society as a population of 600,000 could have produced barely half a century earlier. I asked myself: what becomes of the difference between the wealth consumed by 2,500 persons and that which the 600,000 would have had to consume?"

The answer was clear. It had been used to pay the owners of the establishment 5% interest on the invested capital and, in addition, more than 300,000 pounds sterling (6,000,000 Marks) in profit. And what applied to New Lanark applied to an even higher degree to all the factories in England.

"Without this new wealth created by machines, the wars to overthrow Napoleon and to maintain the aristocratic social principles could not have been carried out. And yet, this new power was the creation of the working class." Source: The Revolution in Mind and Practice, a memorandum addressed to all "Red Republicans, Communists and Socialists of Europe" and sent to the French provisional government in 1848, but also to "Queen Victoria and her responsible advisors."

To them, therefore, the fruits belonged. The new, powerful productive forces, which had previously served only for the enrichment of individuals and the enslavement of the masses, offered Owen the foundation for a social reconstruction and were destined to work as the common property of all, solely for the common welfare of all.

In such a purely business-like way, as the fruit, so to speak, of commercial calculation, Owen's communism originated. It retains this practical character throughout. Thus, in 1823, Owen proposed the relief of Irish misery.